Guss' Pickles

listen to ‘Guss Pickles’ on Audioboo

an excerpt from a nytimes' article on Guss'
The author is related to Marilyn Altman and Goldie Daniels, the Guss girls, who are heard above.

I know it’s unseemly to brag about one’s illustrious family lines, but sometimes a historic turn of events invites the opportunity to name-drop. Some of my closest friends don’t even know it, but I’m related to Jewish royalty (by marriage, I should clarify, but still). My brother married into pickles — Guss’ Pickles, to be specific, the famous Lower East Side institution that announced this week that it would soon leave that neighborhood for the lower rents and enthusiastic pickle purchasers of Borough Park, Brooklyn. The New York blogs have been outdoing themselves in fits of nostalgia about this loss of lingering history on Orchard Street. But for my brother’s mother-in-law, Marilyn Altman, and her sister, Goldie Daniels — the Guss girls, as they were known back in the day, along with their late sister, Elaine — the news about the business, which they sold in 1979, came as a shock. It was also an excuse for them to come in from New Jersey, where they both live, share some old stories about their father, Isadore Guss, and, in Goldie’s case, wolf down some of the half-sours she loves so well. After greeting the current owner of the shop, Goldie, blond and petite at 71, in a gold watch and gold hoops, instinctively situated herself in back of the barrels, the vantage point from which she had sold so many pickles to long lines down Hester Street, the store’s original location. “I ate more pickles than I sold,” she said, dipping a pan — a schissel, she called it, Yiddish for pail — into a barrel. “I loooove pickles.” She took a bite and rolled her eyes. “It’s like my heritage.” Of the three daughters, only Marilyn, the baby, now 65, was deprived the privilege of working at the store. That’s what you get for dropping a yo-yo in a pickle barrel and thinking maybe no one would notice. Goldie, however, worked there until she had children. If her mother had thought a woman could run a business, Goldie would have taken it over after her father’s death in 1975. Those days holding court behind the barrels as the whole neighborhood stopped by were some of the happiest of her life. “You just talked to everyone,” she said, and it was easy to see how that worked. As she chewed her pickle, a man with his daughter contemplated the barrels, and suddenly they were all four in animated conversation about the Great Wall of China, from where the father and daughter had just returned. What did they think? Wasn’t it fabulous? When Marilyn went, she’d worn the wrong shoes, wouldn’t you know it, kept sliding backward the whole time.

Phil's Lower East Side

I had the good fortune to meet Phil at the Institute for Retirees at Brooklyn College (IRPE). For more about the IRPE and to learn about the courses they offer
Phil's dad must have been one of the first Seward Park graduates. Phil knew the joys of Guss' pickles, but he didn't stick around the LES long enough to know about Cheap Heshies

Still Tasting the Sweetness of Growing Up in Half-Sours

It's great to see a picture of Guss. I recognized that face instantly
an excerpt from a recent article in the nytimes by SUSAN DOMINUS

I know it’s unseemly to brag about one’s illustrious family lines, but sometimes a historic turn of events invites the opportunity to name-drop. Some of my closest friends don’t even know it, but I’m related to Jewish royalty (by marriage, I should clarify, but still). My brother married into pickles — Guss’ Pickles, to be specific, the famous Lower East Side institution that announced this week that it would soon leave that neighborhood for the lower rents and enthusiastic pickle purchasers of Borough Park, Brooklyn.
The New York blogs have been outdoing themselves in fits of nostalgia about this loss of lingering history on Orchard Street. But for my brother’s mother-in-law, Marilyn Altman, and her sister, Goldie Daniels — the Guss girls, as they were known back in the day, along with their late sister, Elaine — the news about the business, which they sold in 1979, came as a shock. It was also an excuse for them to come in from New Jersey, where they both live, share some old stories about their father, Isadore Guss, and, in Goldie’s case, wolf down some of the half-sours she loves so well.
After greeting the current owner of the shop, Goldie, blond and petite at 71, in a gold watch and gold hoops, instinctively situated herself in back of the barrels, the vantage point from which she had sold so many pickles to long lines down Hester Street, the store’s original location. “I ate more pickles than I sold,” she said, dipping a pan — a schissel, she called it, Yiddish for pail — into a barrel. “I loooove pickles.” She took a bite and rolled her eyes. “It’s like my heritage.”
Of the three daughters, only Marilyn, the baby, now 65, was deprived the privilege of working at the store. That’s what you get for dropping a yo-yo in a pickle barrel and thinking maybe no one would notice.
Goldie, however, worked there until she had children. If her mother had thought a woman could run a business, Goldie would have taken it over after her father’s death in 1975. Those days holding court behind the barrels as the whole neighborhood stopped by were some of the happiest of her life.

an audio of Guss' daughters reminiscing

Thanks to Murray and Susan for reminding me of this story
an email from Susan

David-
I was friends with Goldie Guss for sometime. I met her on one of my trips to Israel and she lived in East Brunswick (about 15 minutes from me). We lost contact after a few years. There was just a big article about the two Guss sisters in the Times this past weekend. Her married name is Daniels. Small world.

The Closing Of Guss' Pickles

from the Tenement Museum blog

It's all over the local blogosphere: Guss' Pickles, the 90-year-old neighborhood staple on the corner of Broome and Orchard, is on its way out - to a larger, cheaper storefront in Brooklyn. Rent was getting too high, Lo-Down reports, and "when the city put a Muni Meter directly in front of [owner Patricia Fairhurst's] pickle barrels, blocking customers' access, it was the last straw."
Guss' may be famous for surviving decades of gentrification and demographic shifts, but it isn't the only place to buy briny cucumbers east of the Bowery. A quick browse on the web turned up a couple of relative newcomers that stay faithful to old-school preparation techniques (and may become, decades from now, the new neighborhood classics):
Pickle Guys
At his store on Essex Street (once the center of the neighborhood pickle industry), Alan Kaufman makes pickles from "an old Eastern European recipe, just as my mom used to make them." At one point, he even got a chance
to work with one of the owners of Guss' Pickles.
Rick's Picks
Founder Rick Field, a former TV producer, translated a childhood hobby into a business in 2004. His artisinal corn, beet, and green bean pickles are fancier and less traditional than Pickle Guys' or Guss', but they stem from family recipes and are a regular fixture at the annual International Pickle Festival on Orchard Street.

The Obscure Connection Between Guss' Pickles And The Rosenbergs

In the 1930 census Julius Rosenberg was living in the same building, 128 Goerck Street (perhaps the same floor) as the Hollander family, a pickle royalty family of the lower east side. Nathan Hollander, who recently passed away, and Julius Rosenberg were the same age and probably went to school together. 128 Goerck Street was part of the famous Lavanburg Houses.
The Hollanders were mentioned on the blog previously last May
from Michael Blitz

I am very sorry to inform you that my grandfather passed away yesterday, May 18th 2009. We lost the last of the great picklemen. My great grandfather Louis Hollander started selling pickles and produce in 1903 with a horse drawn carriage. And yes it is true that Izzy Guss got his start in the business from my great grandfather. My father Bert Blitz and I were also in the pickle business for many years.

RIP Nat Hollander

I think a moment of silence should be observed for the passing of the last of the great picklemen
These comments were left on the blog on a November, 2007 post

mblitz said...
May 19th 2009
The correct name of the gentleman in the picture is Nathan (Nat) Hollander. How do I know this you ask? I am his grandson, Michael Blitz. I am very sorry to inform you that my grandfather passed away yesterday, May 18th 2009. We lost the last of the great picklemen. My great granfather Louis Hollander started selling pickles and produce in 1903 with a horse drawn carriage. And yes it is true that Izzy Guss got his start in the business from my great grandfather. My father Bert Blitz and I were also in the pickle business for many years. Our mistake was getting involved with Tim Baker and his father. Tim has a track record of doing wrong to people. He should have learned to be a gentleman like my grandfather was.
May 19, 2009 11:43 AM
Anonymous said...
Nathan Hollander was an amazing man and that is his face in that picture. We will miss him very much.

Below I found Nat and his father Louis in the 1930 census. They live at 128 Goerck Street

Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tour

No, the Fat Dave is not me, but he certainly visits some of my favorite eating haunts.
A description from youtube, the above only shows the LES segment:

It's Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tour on the Wheels of Steel! Chow your way through the real New York in an authentic NYC yellow taxi with a pickle man/ cheesemonger/ hot dog vendor/ food writer/ cabbie who has eaten it all.
This Episode's tour features food from Brooklyn and Manhattan. Learn Dave and Roger's Pickle Call at Guss' Pickles (Orchard Street between Broome & Grand, Lower East Side, Manhattan) as you nosh on 6 varieties of pickles. If you're lucky Dave will introduce you to the best skin care product known to man, pickle brine. Then walk down the block for a sesame pancake Chinese sandwhich loaded with pickled carrots, pot roast, soy sauce, cilantro, and hot sauce at the Dumpling House (Eldridge Street between Broome & Grand, Lower East Side, Manhattan) featuring live entertainment from a small Chinese boy and his purple guitar. Next ride over the Brooklyn Bridge into Redhook for chocolate dipped key lime pie at Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies (Pier 41 off Van Dyke Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn). You'll get a great view of the Statue of Liberty while you digest before Dave tours you around Red Hook's mean streets where the smell of gunfire still hangs in the air. And don't fill up yet...next up is the weekly Latino Food Fair (Bay Street between Clinton & Henry, Red Hook, Brooklyn). Tacos, empanadas, madoros, horchatas, papusa, and Ecuadorian & Salvadorian food recommendations from locals. Hop back in the cab and get some views of Rockaway on the way to Sheepshead Bay where you'll chow down on the finest Roast Beef Sandwhiches from Roll 'n Roaster (Eammons Avenue & Nostrand Avenue, Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn). And it's okay to make fun of Dave when somehow the cheese ends up in his ear. You'd think he'd learn how to avoid that by now. Our final destination for your last 2 meals is L&B Spumoni Gardens (86th Street & West 10th Street, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn). You'll get one of the few $1.75 slices left in the city (much bigger than your normal slice) and because there's always room for desert, finish up with L&B's famous spumoni! Any food you don't finish will happily be eaten by cute puppies you meet along the way or Dave, himself (Dave prefers you choose him).
Think you're up to the challenge? Book your eating experience email Famous Fat Dave at Dave@FamousFatDave.com
Hop in the cab, hold on tight. You're gonna be eating all through the night. He'll take you where you've never been in the Bronx and Queens and South Brooklyn. It's Famous Fat Dave's Five Borough Eating Tour on the Wheels of Steel. Pickles, Pastrami, Dumplings, Salami! Take a look, grab a bite, put it in your tummy.

The New Pickle Man

While researching current information about LES pickles I came across this great illustration. It's of "The Pickle Guy," Alan Kaufman, my choice for the new pickle king of the LES. The illustration is the work of Zina Sanders (copyright 2007) You can see more of her artistry here.. The picture accompanied this interesting article:
"Who transforms the commonplace, pimply cucumber into a briny delicacy, and what leads him into the pickle trade? Meet Alan, age 48, who makes pickles on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His neighborhood used to feature lots of competition but is now a mix of fancy little dress shops and tenements with old Chinese ladies perched in spindly lounge chairs, gossiping in front of their buildings.

"I’ve been making pickles since 1981. I was a commercial advertising photographer, and my job and lifestyle meant I had a lot of free time; I could work two weeks and then not work for a month. My friend’s family had a pickle store, and I used to come down and work a couple of days a week for them, and then I started working Sundays and then holidays and … I enjoyed it! So, I closed up my photography business and I went straight into this.

"What I liked most of all, is it’s nice to be outdoors. And the fact that people like when they eat the product., that they say, 'Wow, this is good! '

"Cucumbers we get from all up and down the eastern seaboard: Florida, Texas—I don’t know that Texas is the eastern seaboard, but that’s as far as we go—the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia. Certain times of the year we get from Michigan; the best cucumbers around are from Michigan. That’s when we make sour pickles, when we get Michigan cucumbers. They’re the best. And sour pickles are not only the best sellers, but they take the longest to make. It takes three months to make a sour pickle. And you need a real good cucumber to last three months.

"Take a large size cucumber or a smaller cucumber: the smaller cucumbers are always better. Actually, we don’t use cucumbers, we use kirbys. And smaller kirbys are always better. If you cut a kirby in half, and you look inside, you see a lot of meat and very little seeds, and the seeds are very small. So that makes it tighter and and there’s going to be more crunch and more snap. When you buy a big cucumber, like you get in the supermarket, like for salads, you get very little meat and all moisture and big seeds. And when you pickle that, it’ll just get mushier and softer and soggier.

"The pickles themselves—news, halfs and three-quarters—are basically the same. It’s all saltwater, pickling spices and garlic and the amount of time they spend in the brine. Sour pickles we make a little differently: we use more salt in the beginning, to start them, ‘cause that’s what makes them last longer and stay crunchier. Also, we don’t put garlic in the sour pickles till the end. What happens is, the garlic will start to dissolve the skin; so if they sit there with the garlic for three or four months, it’ll start to eat away the skin, and become very thin-skinned. So we usually put the garlic in at the end.

"I grew up in Queens, in Rosedale, and I loved pickles when I was a kid. I used to eat them all the time. Every Saturday, my mom used to get a jar of pickled tomatoes, and as soon as she’d get them home, I’d start eating them.

"I have different things with different pickles: if I’m having a tunafish sandwich or a pastrami sandwich, I prefer a sour pickle. But when I’m having a hamburger, I prefer a half sour pickle. And if I just want to eat something when its hot outside, I grab a new pickle. I’m spoiled, that way.

"Making pickles is very gratifying. It’s sort of like being an artist, when he paints something and he says to himself, “Wow, that really came out great!” Well, I do the same thing: when somebody takes that pickle and he says, 'Wow that’s really good!' I go, 'Thank you!'

"When I started here, there used to be one, two, three pickle stores on this block here, and across Delancey there were another two. There’s other pickle companies around now, but they don’t make pickles, they just buy and sell them. So I’m the only one left."

The Pickle Man

Another Lepkoff picture, another mystery solved. I showed this picture to Alan Kaufman of the Pickle Guys and he said, "That's Max Hollander and he's still alive!. His place was on Essex" Here's more on the history of LES pickles from a 1996 Times' article:
As recently as 20 years ago, Essex Street between Grand and Hester Streets had four pickle stores. Today, only one remains: Essex Street Pickles, and it is being renovated, modernized. A concrete floor is replacing the wooden one. But the "Please Keep Your Hands Out of Barrels" sign is staying put.

"This is the last place," said Richard Young, who grew up in the neighborhood during the Depression and made a pickle pit stop last week on the way to his midtown apartment. "In the old days you had pickle men selling pickles out of pushcarts."

After World War II, as many Jews moved from the Lower East Side, local demand for pickles ebbed. Now Essex Street Pickles has 8,000 mail-order customers from Florida to California. "So many displaced New Yorkers miss pickles," said Tim Baker, 33, who runs the store. "People kept asking, 'Would you mail it to me?' And I kept asking, 'Would you pay for it?' Finally a customer sent me a check for a couple of hundred bucks and said, 'Send me pickles.' " Some neighborhood newcomers are pickle aficionados. "The Chinese people are great customers," Mr. Baker said. "They love pickled products. And we have plenty of Spanish-speaking customers."

Essex Street Pickles is rooted firmly in the dynastic tradition of Lower East Side pickledom. It all began when Izzy Guss arrived from Russia around 1910 and landed a job at Hollander Pickles, then opened his own store, Guss's Pickles, nearby. Next, Mr. Guss's former son-in-law opened the Pickle Man. Then came May 2, 1982 -- the day that was, to pickle eaters, what the handshake on the White House lawn was in the Middle East. Hollander and Guss's Pickles joined forces to become Essex Street Pickles. Mr. Baker is the son of the business partner of the husband of Louis Hollander's granddaughter.

"Crossing Delancey," a romantic comedy about a pickle man, was filmed there in 1988. The brine -- water, salt, garlic and spices -- is still made with Izzy Guss's Russian recipes. But wooden barrels have given way to plastic, which is cheaper and easier to clean. And the Health Department ruled that pickle men must wear plastic gloves. "I feel like a doctor in these," Mr. Baker said. The store is closed on Saturdays for the Jewish Sabbath, but lines stretch around the block on Sundays. Some people set up lawn chairs outside before Jewish holidays, when Essex Street grinds horseradish to order. "When you get a sandwich and a pickle, the pickle is the main course," said Yochonon Pivovoz, who has lived in the neighborhood all his life. "The sandwich is just a side dish." MICHAEL COOPER

A follow up:
In 2002, Tim Baker sold his ownership of Guss Pickles to Andrew Leibowitz.
The Guss Pickles trademark now belongs to Crossing Delancey Pickle Enterprises Corporation. The headquarters is now in Cedarhurst, NY. Andrew Leibowitz is the CEO of the company. They maintain a factory in the Bronx and a farm located in New Jersey. The offical website is gusspickles.com.
The Manhattan store has been granted permission to also use the name, but it is a separate business to the Cedarhurst business